Queen Hortense eBook

“Alas!” she cried, bursting into tears,
as she extended her hand to Louise de Cochelet, “alas!
my courage is at an end! My mother is dead, my
brother has left me, the Emperor Alexander will soon
forget his promised protection, and I alone must contend,
with my two children, against all the annoyances and
enmities to which the name I bear will subject me!
I fear I shall live to regret that I allowed myself
to be persuaded to abandon my former plan. Will
the love I bear my country recompense me for the torments
which are in store for me?”

The queen’s dark forebodings were to be only
too fully realized. In the great and solemn hour
of misfortune, Fate lifts to mortal vision the veil
that conceals the future, and, like the Trojan prophetess,
we see the impending evil, powerless to avert it.

BOOK III.

THE RESTORATION.

CHAPTER I.

THE RETURN OF THE BOURBONS.

On the 12th of April, Count d’Artois, whom Louis
XVIII. had sent in advance, and invested with the
dignity of a lieutenant-general of France, made his
triumphal entry into Paris. At the gates of the
city, he was received by the newly-formed provisional
government, Talleyrand at its head; and here it was
that Count d’Artois replied to the address of
that gentleman in the following words: “Nothing
is changed in France, except that from to-day there
will be one Frenchman more in the land.”
The people received him with cold curiosity, and the
allied troops formed a double line for his passage
to the Tuileries, at which the ladies of the Faubourg
St. Germain, adorned with white lilies and white cockades,
received him with glowing enthusiasm. Countess
Ducayla, afterward the well-known friend of Louis
XVIII., had been one of the most active instruments
of the restoration, and she it was who had first unfolded
again in France the banner of the Bourbons—­the
white flag. A few days before the entrance of
the prince, she had gone, with a number of her royalist
friends, into the streets, in order to excite the people
to some enthusiasm for the legitimate dynasty.
But the people and the army had still preserved their
old love for the emperor, and the proclamation of
Prince Schwartzenberg, read by Bauvineux in the streets,
was listened to in silence. True, the royalists
cried, "Vive le roi!" at the end of this reading,
but the people remained indifferent and mute.

This sombre silence alarmed Countess Ducayla; it seemed
to indicate a secret discontent with the new order
of things. She felt that this sullen people must
be inflamed, and made to speak with energy and distinctness.
To awaken enthusiasm by means of words and proclamations
had been attempted in vain; now the countess determined
to attempt to arouse them by another means—­to
astonish them by the display of a striking symbol—­to
show them the white flag of the Bourbons!